Culture
sheril | November 18, 2008This morning I'm off to meet Chris in LA for the launch of the National Academy of Sciences Science and Entertainment Exchange. The Exchange will connect producers, directors, writers and others in need of scientific information for their productions with science, medical and engineering experts.
Spanning the range of science topics, The Exchange can find experts that will work with you to identify and effectively portray the science details that complement a storyline. We can help flesh out ideas that depend upon accurate details relating to insects, extraterrestrial life, unusual Earth-…
razib | November 17, 2008A few days ago I suggested that it is folly to expect Europeans would elect a person of color to their highest office when so few Europeans are persons of color. Today in Slate a piece basically suggests that Americans should not be so full of themselves, Only in America? The wrongheaded American belief that Barack Obama could only happen here:
People are still amazed he won. In a country where more than a few white folks would still say outright that one of "them'' shouldn't be in charge, here was a politician who didn't downplay his ethnicity, his foreign-sounding name, or his father who…
razib | November 17, 2008Here is a chart from Jim Manzi:
I added a trendline of GDP growth in the United States from 1995-2006 to suggest the general economic climate. As they usually don't say: the fundamentals are not strong. Matt Yglesias makes a pointed, if admittedly somewhat unfair, analogy:
To be clear, when I compared arguments for bailing out the auto industry to arguments I feel for before the invasion of Iraq, I'm not saying that the consequences of bailing out the car industry would be as catastrophic as the consequences of invading Iraq. I'm saying there's a certain structural similarity in the…
sheril | November 17, 2008While at The Salk last month for Beyond Belief 3, I also taped this episode of The Science Review for The Science Network with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Nita Farahany, Lawrence Krauss, and Roger Bingham. It's a discussion on neurolaw, neuropolitics, and science in government. (Lawrence and I get involved in the conversation about 30 minutes in):
razib | November 16, 2008If Detroit Falls, Foreign Makers Could Be Buffer:
"You would have an auto industry in the United States more like that of Mexico and Canada: foreign-owned," said Sean McAlinden, chief economist at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., which describes itself as a nonprofit organization that has "strong relationships with industry, government agencies, universities, research institutes, labor organizations" and other groups with an interest in the auto business.
Like Canada! Now that's scary. Here are some interesting numbers from the piece:
The transition to that new…
razib | November 15, 2008Elsewhere, I reiterate the common sense case that the decline in the proportion of Americans who are of "English" ancestry over the past 30 years from 22% to 9% is mostly a function of changed questionnaires and cultural preferences.
razib | November 12, 2008The map to the left shows the counties which voted for Obama (blue) and McCain (red) in the 2008 election. The blue counties are part of the Black Belt, the area where blacks are a majority of the population because of the economic concentration of cotton culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. The McCain Belt, those counties where John McCain beat George W. Bush, is getting some press, but obviously it is interesting to wonder about areas where large black populations which increased turnout are likely masking the shift of the white vote for John McCain. I have already shown on a…
sheril | November 12, 2008Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday that she would be honored to help President-elect Barack Obama in his new administration, even if he did hang around with an "unrepentant domestic terrorist."
And the source is...
razib | November 11, 2008A Test of Climate, Sun, and Culture Relationships from an 1810-Year Chinese Cave Record:
A record from Wanxiang Cave, China, characterizes Asian Monsoon (AM) history over the past 1810 years. The summer monsoon correlates with solar variability, Northern Hemisphere and Chinese temperature, Alpine glacial retreat, and Chinese cultural changes. It was generally strong during Europe's Medieval Warm Period and weak during Europe's Little Ice Age, as well as during the final decades of the Tang, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties, all times that were characterized by popular unrest. It was strong during the…
razib | November 11, 2008You can watch Beyond Belief: Candles in the Dark online (Chris & Sheril have two segments). Unfortunately the neat Flash interface means you can't just load an audio file into your ipod....
cmooney | November 11, 2008My latest Science Progress column is on a topic that we've already discussed a bit here over the past week--the meaning of Michael Crichton's work. You can read it here. It starts like this:
Anyone who ever met the late Michael Crichton--who died of cancer in Los Angeles last week at the age of 66--was first stunned by his height. Crichton stood a staggering 6â²9â³, and yet by all accounts was a humble giant in person. Certainly that was my impression when the polymathic sci-fi thriller writer, film producer and director, screenwriter, computer programmer, and medical doctor went out of his…
razib | November 10, 2008In regards to the title, in a word, I don't think so. More on that later. Nationally the exit polls suggest that these are results for Barack Obama broken down by "Size of Place":
Urban: 63%
Suburban: 50%
Rural: 45%
There's a rather clear relationship here whereby Obama's vote totals in urban areas are higher than in suburban areas, which are higher than in rural areas. Various factors such as his liberalism, his blackness and his urban machine origins make this totally unsurprising. "Real Americans" in rural areas naturally are more averse to Obama. But what about states that buck the…
razib | November 10, 2008Michael Lewis has a very long piece up sketching out the fever dream that was the late great Wall Street:
This was what they had been waiting for: total collapse. "The investment-banking industry is fucked," Eisman had told me a few weeks earlier. "These guys are only beginning to understand how fucked they are. It's like being a Scholastic, prior to Newton. Newton comes along, and one morning you wake up: 'Holy shit, I'm wrong!'â" Now Lehman Brothers had vanished, Merrill had surrendered, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were just a week away from ceasing to be investment banks. The…
razib | November 10, 2008Recently I listened to an interview of the historian Joseph Ellis. Ellis observes that the decimation of Native Americans was a Greek tragedy, while the perpetuation of slavery for three generations of the republic was a Shakespearean one. The distinction which Ellis makes is that Greek tragedy is fated, while Shakespearean tragedies are subject to the whims of our own will and contingent choices. The latter we may theoretically forestall or alter, but the former is subject to the deterministic wheels of history.
I believe that as a factual matter Ellis is correct; the indigenous peoples…
sheril | November 10, 2008
With that simple "we" in millions of in-boxes, the post-baby-boomer era seems to have begun. The endless "us versus them" battles of the '60s, over Vietnam, abortion, race and gender, at least for a moment last week, seemed as out-of-touch as a rotary phone.
These young voters and those slightly older, who together may forever be known as Generation O, were the ground troops of the campaign. They opened hundreds of Obama offices in remote areas, registered voters and persuaded older relatives to take a chance on the man with the middle name Hussein.
They saw in Mr. Obama, 47, who was born at…
razib | November 9, 2008Politico is the pleasure of the pundit-class. That being said, Andrew Gelman's site makes it rather clear that Politico is also US Weekly for politicians. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but their fixation on epiphenomenal froth should really have "for entertainment purposes only" disclaimer. I'm picking on Politico because I don't want to crucify Howard Fineman again lest the dead shall rise to rebuke my abuse.
This post is prompted by Andrew's post, A Democratic swing, not an Obama swing:
I think Charlie Cook was closer to the mark when he wrote, "The political environment and…
sheril | November 9, 2008A few readers emailed about the rumors surrounding a supposed Wonder Woman movie. Yes, I heard about Megan Fox, but it's not true, with no word on when or even whether the film will happen.
Thanks to those who remembered I'm holding onto hope that we'll see a strong, independent female role model/superhero make her way to the big screen soon. In the mean time, there will be an animated DVD out next year:
razib | November 8, 2008Earlier this week Andrew Gelman suggested that it looks like Barack Obama's election had less to do with "realignment" then an overall tilt in the electorate, which just managed to "tip" a few borderline states. This is rather clear when you look at maps of the results from 2004 to 2008. But today Gelman reports data which suggests that the gains in 2008 were disproportionately in wealthier regions. This makes sense when you inspect the McCain Belt, those counties where Republicans actually did better in 2008 than they did in 2004.